


Wayfarer at the Zephyr

by azurestained



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan, The Trials of Apollo - Rick Riordan
Genre: Afterlife, Alternate Universes, Dark Magic, Fluff and Angst, Ghosts, M/M, Mythology References, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-03-03 10:27:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24349498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azurestained/pseuds/azurestained
Summary: Will Solace counts the hours and greets demise to heaven-bound pavements. (Or, as the stars align, he spends his final days on earth.)
Relationships: Nico di Angelo/Will Solace
Comments: 8
Kudos: 10





	Wayfarer at the Zephyr

**Author's Note:**

> Playlist:
> 
> 1\. Knockin' on Heaven's Door - Bob Dylan  
> 2\. Don't Cry - Guns N' Roses  
> 3\. Dream On - Aerosmith  
> 4\. Soldatino - Paola Bennet  
> 5\. I Don't Want to Miss A Thing - Aerosmith

**Prelude** — Estranged Cadaver

Valhalla told him of paradise, he saw a battlefield and walked his way. On the flipsides of paint-red daffodils lining around crescent slabs of wolverine teeth, envisaged before is a lone island of shallow viking dreams. When he turned, he saw the angel of death and the snow of stygian ice dusted on the lonely glass shard, perhaps a little too unorthodox and the slightest bit unsettling.

He sees a dark place maybe a few feet away, the dream reveals golden locks on the mouth of River Lethe as he had drowned to his demise. He sees a smiling face. Reincarnation, he had thought. What strikes him unfortunate was about why he thought he lived all that life only for a run-over to the head and realizing all he did was living.

So when the current washes over and crimson paints the bay at his cutthroat, rusty old pair of shoes, he witnesses heaven and an opera-singing of about five thousand miles away. Five hundred million years. History unfolded far better than he would have liked.

That day, the ghost of Will Solace roamed the ground again in 1983, and he had been told it was his final journey.

He leaves the ominous hum of the bestial _purgatorio_ , the slowest reconciliation of human life memories filling up the crevices of his mind. Humane. His final judgment hails at the end of the month, curtains revealing a standstill of ten days.

Ten days for the last farewell.

He sees him later; elderly grime felt too soon for thirty years old. His widowed husband watches by his bedroom porch, grey cars and worn-down minivans littering the townie road below, his gaze emanating the same old fondness he had fallen in love with. The new paperback on his desk read that the 1980 research on chronic illness had indeed been credited to Nico di Angelo, and his news articles indicated that his husband died not too long ago.

What countryside Arizona didn't know was that Nico di Angelo was a wielder of supernatural sorcery, and he had vaguely died each and every day of his life talking to the saints.

Will Solace briefly remembers that he had died of chronic heart failure seven years ago, and the arduous scratch of laughter rumbled deep in his gut, ridiculing of bastardly irony. The pseudonym _Dr. Solace_ had been a product of the olden days—a cardiologist, they had called. He laughs as tears grow molten hot at vast expanses of translucent skin, he laughs at the deathly pale silhouette of his form, stops, and then laughs again—Will Solace laughs at the run-down house that had never changed since the day he had died.

He slowly understands—comprehends why his husband had chosen to alienate at his own will, grasping more of the cursed sorcery in his small cave of space. Nico di Angelo had accepted his absence; he had done it way before when he started his medication, when he started telling him his hands were cold. He knew when he saw the first drafts on his work space, the mortified gape of medical research forgotten on the howls of colder nights.

When Will Solace was given his last ten days on earth, the first thing he wanted to do was apologize.

**Part One** — Sans Silence

_“Purgatorio_ ends at summer solstice, your reincarnation will not go past the centuries, but ten days are your final call at cleaning up your… mess,” a hollowed grunt follows, blithering snide remarks at how pitiful mortal lives have been. “All I am saying, Will Solace, is that you have no time. We are letting you free, but not for long.”

“And if I don’t finish in ten days?” Will asked, the hesitant shrill of his voice cracked in a whisper.

The misted form stuttered in small, glitched intervals, almost contemplating, _thinking._ “Ginnungagap, the Void, Asphodel, I don’t know…” There was another pause. “Hell, perhaps it would be. The various afterlives awaiting you is a myriad of doom. Demise. We never know, child. Here’s the thing: don’t disappear.”

The entryway flashes into his eyes, and below greets him the mortal, dystopian maelstrom of human life disdain. Bile washes his throat and he’s suddenly in his small neighborhood; the garden looking as sad as he had remembered. He sees all the things he had bought, furnished, and laid waste when he had died. Seven years ago wasn’t too far, his husband never changed anything.

Nico di Angelo sits by his bedroom porch, the last stash of research papers spilling out on the creaky floor boards. Will feels his heart harden at the dismounted wedding portrait on the wooden shelves, the angry drunken cracks finding home at old, used glass. He thinks it might have been his husband’s old rage. He contemplates it must have been his coping mechanism.

Nico looks back, he was aged and desolate. His eyes still looked the same, but his gaze are miles away. Then Will Solace stops, _realizes._ Nico is looking back at him.

“Hang around?” Nico gestures outside, lone vehicles painting the atmosphere translucent. “Another manifestation, eh? Cursed sorcery never gives me some slack,” He sighs, as if this had happened thousands of times. Maybe it had. Maybe countless didn’t deem unusual. “Go on, you can just stare at me, stare at this house. Parade on my little pity party as I start deciding on whether this summer should be my last one or not. I’m tired, Will. I’m tired of looking at this house because you are not here. I’m tired of thinking of leaving when I can’t even let go of what we had.”

“Are you okay?” Will asks softly.

Nico pauses, the shadows on his face confused and de-cluttered, as if his thoughts had been mauled alive. “Okay, yeah. Okay.” He repeats it again, “This is the first time my dead husband’s manifestations talk to me. I could get used to this. I’m not crazy.”

Will Solace feels heat trickling at his throat. He turns and comes closer, hands cupping at the corners of his husband’s face. Despair washes over him as he realizes that he was still a ghost, so all he could do was let his translucence pass through skin.

“It’s me,” he says, unguarded, relentless.

The look of realization on his husband’s face falls short as he slowly brings the pieces together, the floodgates fall down his eyes as he cries softly, _desperately_. _“You’re here.”_

**Act I:** Réaliser _  
rimani! riposati accanto a me_

“How long?”

Will Solace looks far ahead, the meadows seemed to wilt the longer down it went. Graveyard howls felt home in the vast crevice of his inner mind, so he doesn’t feel unease at the diabolic undertones of it all. He ignores Nico asking about the time he has left. Doesn’t dwell on the temporariness it brings.

“Why did you practice sorcery?” Will asks.

Nico stares, seemingly at a crossroads on whether he’s merely seeing a fleeting image of his late husband, or at a nightly daze sprung forth from his nightmares. “I knew you would die, sooner or later. I was at the time of my life where I’d decide to let you go or let you stay. You know I’m eccentric, that’s on our marriage vows. You chose to marry your eccentric, messed up husband.” He laughs humorlessly.

“We never really married, you know. It was the 1980s…” Will trails off, swallowing the hurt.

Nico only looks desolate. “Your eccentric husband decided to let you go, because there was no cure, and my damned eccentricity decided for once to ignore pessimism and nihilism altogether, opting for reality instead, and that reality was you dying. No way out. At least that’s what I thought. So what did that eccentricity do? He wanted to bring you back to life with sorcery.” Will Solace sees the nakedness of his fingers, and he only realizes Nico wasn’t wearing a ring. “All these nights I’m talking to manifested visions of you, and I’m still wondering if the magic turned me mad.”

Will Solace sees a bloodshot gaze looking back at him, and he wonders how many times insanity must have knocked on his husband’s doors.

He wonders if he had been the same man he fell in love with, wonders if the inked scrolls on the floor were evidence of his demise. He wonders of the tears shed for him that early noon, and feels his heart breaking at the expense of his soul.

“Nico,” Will starts. “I’m sorry.”

His husband stares at him. He sees red on the nose, red at the cheeks, crimson at lined crevices of his eyes and stays silent.

“Do you still love me?” Nico di Angelo asks. He doesn’t miss the tremble sounding low at the end of his words.

“I want to.” Will replies, “I want to love you again.”

Not too long.

**Act II:** Estai  
 _non te ne andare_

When he rises on the next day, he feels warmth.

He recalls the sinister hollow of life after death; dreams of the empty walls closing in hushed nuances of all his past regrets. He awakes to the ancient wooden ceiling of his house and forgets the endless ceilings of the _purgatorio_ for once.

Nico di Angelo must have let him sleep in his bed, and shame hits him once he realizes that his husband had slept on the floor. He turns again and finds relief at being able to sleep. Will Solace remembers he never really slept. He was awake for all seven years, restless hours upon his days.

He hears a wooden creak and a few hinges whirring him up awake; Nico di Angelo stands at the doorpost and calls him over. They sit by the rugged kitchen table, dents lining around its edges. As Nico devours his morning brew of anxiety, he keeps on looking at the ghosted silhouette sitting in front of him—Will, in his state as a ghost, cannot consume food.

“I won’t be here for too long,” Will begins. He sees his expression morph into disappointment; Nico doesn’t hide his frown.

“Then… what do you want to—what do you want _us_ to do?”

“I want to do a lot of things,” Will feels himself stuttering. “With you, I mean— _listen._ This is my last chance, Nico. If you still can’t believe the things that are happening then leave it that way. Leave it the way you think that this is all a dream, maybe some messed up fantasy. I don’t know. I don’t want to hurt you anymore, but I hope you can help me get this over with so I can _leave_ — _“_

“Let’s do it.” Nico says.

The aftertaste of burnt morning coffee lingers for quite a while. Will says, _hey, let’s visit our friends._ Nico replies, _sure, okay, just go get ready._ And so he does. He had been. He was doing it in near-void for almost a decade.

They stop by a mile, Will’s heartbeat was timeless.

When Will Solace stands in front of Lou Ellen’s front porch, he sees that the mail is empty and the lights are off. He sees the ruined garden and wonders just how long he’d been gone. _Far too long_ , he thinks. “Lou Ellen. Last name Markowitz.” Nico said from behind. “They married in 1979. I didn’t attend the ceremony.”

“Can we go to Percy’s?” Will sounds desperate.

“Of course.”

Nico di Angelo drives them past blues, yellows; Will Solace lingers on the farmlands that had once been green, but the autumn hues betrayed him of his newfound memories as Nico goes further into the glowering lights of sunset. The world became darker at every bump on the road. Will wonders if Percy Jackson and Annabeth Chase were okay. He wonders if they were still together, and if they weren’t, who took custody of their child?

They stop by at the cemetery.

“Do we need to take a break? How much farther?” Will asks.

“We’re here.”

“What?”

“Percy’s. The Jacksons decided to lay Annabeth’s corpse right beside his.”

**Act III:** Solari  
 _io ti veglierò, io ti proteggerò_

Will’s ghost knocks forward, as if the wind of the forsaken night had enough strength to carry him back. Nico tells him, “Irony, that was.” Tears fall from the expanse of sunlit skin. The half-moon mocks him as the first drizzle of the night pours over; ripples, simmers down, harbors. Will Solace couldn’t feel the rain. He feels cold.

“It’s just ironic how good old neighbor Percy Jackson was the son of the greatest surfer to have ever lived, how he’s a water sports connoisseur, and how his entire family’s plane crash-landed in the middle of nowhere. On water.” He didn’t like the ominous swirl in Nico’s tone. He was speaking of the past—one where Will wasn’t present. He didn’t like how it was a tragic one.

“Lou Ellen and Cecil moved out, by the way. They left Arizona a couple years back. They couldn’t bear the memories of you. I haven’t heard from them ever since.”

They found shelter by the trees. They sat on wilted grass, wilted feelings. Will doesn’t mind Nico’s hand overlapping the transparency of his own.

“Isn’t it miserable, Nico?”

The laugh that came after him was dry. “You have all these beautiful landscapes and a white picket fence. You have your perfect husband, your perfect friends, and your perfect countryside house that’s gotten funded from the last of your livelihood. You’re away from the uptown bourgeoisie so you could love freely and live your happy ever after,” Nico says. “The fates say otherwise. It’s not in the cards, not in the aftermath of cult sorcery; it’s not on the research I’ve devoted half my life to, not written in the endings of the novels you like. I lost my husband seven years ago, my friends are all dead and missing, and then I see my husband’s ghost talking to me, after I convinced myself I wasn’t insane—!”

The rain applauds louder, crueler.

“If you ask me, Will Solace, it was indeed pretty miserable.” 

**Act IV:** Frēon  
 _ti pentirai di tutto fuorchè d’essere venuto a me,  
liberamente, fieramente_

Evanescence shows up at the window the next day. Will Solace ignores the angel of death reminding him of the time he has left.

“Where are we going today?” Nico asks him. Today, under his eyes were purple, his vest was beige.

“Take me to our wedding,” Will says. Nico nods and almost grabs his hand, but stops after realizing.

Nico di Angelo takes him to a hill; it was high noon and the heat blistered on opaque daffodils, plain bermuda. Ten steps below and he sees a young man in his white suit, chrysanthemum sitting by his chest, the smile glimmering like the last goodbye. Will Solace imagines himself ten, fifteen years before 1983, before the day he had passed.

“I loved your white suit,” Will smiles, albeit sadly, “I loved your wedding vows.”

“I loved the way you said yes, it made me remember how you proposed first,” Nico replies. “I loved how our priest was Percy Jackson. We really didn’t have anyone else.”

Will laughs at the memory, “Yeah, what was up with _that?”_

“I loved the night that followed after.” Nico continues, reminiscing.

“I loved how you kissed me, I wish I could do that again.” Will looks at him, then stares down at his translucent hands, translucent feet. He stares at the ghost of himself, and how his skin disintegrates into smaller voids.

“I love you,” Nico di Angelo said breathlessly.

“I know.”

“Do you?”

“I want to.”

“Then will you marry me? Again?”

Will finds desperation in his eyes, so he searches deeper, _longer,_ until he battles with the deities of self-restraint and against the tides of no-return. Will can’t remember the last time he had been desperate. Maybe it was seven years ago when he could do nothing about his death. Maybe it was a few years before that, when he and Nico were on their last penny. Maybe it was a few days ago, when the afterlife spirits had released him to tread on his last mortal journey.

“If I marry you again, are six days enough?” Will throat feels restricted, so he says it slowly, carefully. His words tiptoe on broken glass, bloodied and uneasy. “I can’t afford to hurt you again. Not again, Nico.”

“I can afford to think of this as a dream. You’ll be marrying me again, in my dream. In this dream the ending will be euphoric, triumphant, _happy,”_ Nico di Angelo sounded unsure. “You were the one who brought me here, Solace,” his smile was desolate, “You brought me here knowing I would want to marry you again.”

Green hill, seven guests, laurel wreath of victory and a vow that said yes. Plummeting wind roaring down on March, April, May. Their wedding was on the twenty-fourth of June.

“I’d do it again, Will. I’d do it countless times. So for six days, love me again.”

Will says yes. He says yes amidst the fluorescence of his ghost; says beneath the grueling thunder of near-future remorse. He remembers he wasn’t there to attend Lou Ellen’s wedding, wasn’t there when Cecil cut ties with Nico di Angelo. He wasn’t there breaking down from hearing about the news of Flight CA2140 crashing down on sea, heartache down at bay. He faintly remembers the radiance on the face of Percy Jackson’s daughter, until he agonizes over the fact that he can no longer remember her name.

They leave the hill, and Nico di Angelo tells him something, not looking back.

“Happy anniversary, Will. For seven years I ate the anniversary cake alone.”

**Part Two** — Of Gold and Cerulean

**Act V:** Thēsauros  
 _ti amo, non ho nessun pensiero che non sia tuo_

On the fifth day, Will Solace arose to love.

He wakes up in the folds of immaculate linen and yellow sunshine; and for the first time in all his frozen hours, Will Solace feels the sun. As he stirred, there was a fine, arduous shuffling from across him—Nico di Angelo was muttering in his sleep. Will smiles, ignoring the hurt—avoiding the banes of interim at his cold, sweaty palms.

Nico di Angelo wakes up; Will Solace sees voids of celestial black.

He starts the recalling. In the late 1970s, love found home in a volunteer clinic, somewhere down south. Will prides in the bronzed plaque of his doctorate, standing in his charity work office. He fixes broken arms, broken legs—he patches them up and leaves them to mend. Broken hearts, he has yet to fix, but it was only a couple more miles away.

This was his entryway. The volunteer work in Texas would take him to the utter joys of cardiology, and it would only be a matter of time until he achieves it.

A man follows in, the strands of dark stygian flowing down a youthful face. His following words come in faint, shy undertones. “Is Dr. William Solace here?”

“It’s just _Will,_ actually,” He smiles.

Red blooms on olive patches of skin. Suddenly the dark veils of hair reveal two eyes the most beautiful he had ever seen, and he feels falling in reverse. The restriction in his chest wanted to jailbreak bars, set itself free, and launch into rolling stones, waving hurricanes, winding sinkholes.

The monophonic thumping tells him, _yes,_ I like his eyes, I like his voice. _I think I want to fall in love._

“Nico di Angelo,” he brings an outstretched arm, the lilt of frayed nerves evident in his voice, “I’m a researcher. I got relocated from Italy, so I’m subjected to find Dr. William Solace and continue my qualitative study on selected Texan populations,” he clears his throat, “I _mean_ —Will. Find Dr. Will Solace. My apologies.”

“Okay,” Will feels silly, his grin stretching out the coasts of Texas and the warmth of day, “Right, I received the recommendation letter from Professor Knowles. It would be the greatest pleasure to work with you.”

He awakens from his trance when the shuffling figure beside him reveals messy locks of hair, dark and uneven. Intense warmth suddenly blinds him, cages his translucence in fragile chambers. He sees dark cosmos stare back at him, the oceans breaking the dam of hot, molten tears. Nico di Angelo awakes crying, hovered above the ghost of him. “Good morning, Will,” he breathes.

“Good morning, love.” Will smiles, and he feels the sun smiling, too.

**———**

“Take me to the meadows,” Will says this time around. “Take me back to where we had our first date.”

Nico brings the both of them east of where their house was. He feels each rust of worn-down wheels whir him to his senses, and later feels the drag of warmth across his palm. Nico di Angelo tries to hold his hand, the other on the steering wheel, and Will barely recalls that, _yes,_ this was how their first date went.

They didn’t go uptown, didn’t go to where the large cities were. They stayed in the remote areas, east of Arizona, where no one would see two men holding hands; two men pining; two men in love.

Nico drops them off a couple moments later, the buzz of Will’s favorite rock band dying out as the car doors open, and they see paradise. “You were a very attractive man,” Nico smiles, staring right into his eyes, “I wasn’t really sure what I wanted back then; who I _was_ back then. I wondered why I was never attracted to the ‘insanely beautiful’ colleague I had been working with for three years—that’s what they at least told me.”

Will feels his ghostly pale figure waste away at the wind, but now he feels more solid—surer than before _._ His fortitude knocks against the strong wisps of wind, his hair cascades along golden light.

“Then I saw you. I finally understood why. William Solace was far more beautiful than Professor Knowles. I got lost immediately when you smiled at me.”

Will shakes his head, “No way, Professor Knowles _was_ beautiful. You’re giving me way too much credit.”

Nico smiles again, just looking at him, gaze emanating the same unchanging fondness as it had back then. _Back then._ He feels sudden desolation.

“You know,” Nico starts softly, as if he doesn’t want to be heard. “When our first date ended, I decided that I wanted to grow old with you.”

“Nico…”

“I fell in love too quickly, scared I’d also fall out too swiftly. I was scared I’d get over that feeling fast because, _what if, what if, what if…”_ Necromancy falls over his hands. The grass wilts from where he sits. “But it’s been years, Will. It had been almost a _decade._ You already died, and I thought for the longest time that I would get over it. Maybe I would remarry. Maybe I would find the same eyes that you had. Maybe there was someone who smiled at me the same way you did.”

Will lets him. He lets him pour out the melancholy locked away from the decades behind, and accepts the bellowing rage threatening at the dead patches of grass around their feet.

“I’m still here. I still find myself loving you. I’m still in love with you.”

When Will can no longer take the destruction ripping out at his shipwrecked emotions, at the dawn of his desolate pulse, his infuriated senses, he kisses the life out of Nico di Angelo. The collision of lips flew like the west winds, dragged like molten flood, and it was fervent, _intensifying._ Nico gets tackled backwards, and the dead grass lays waste at deeply barren feelings. His tears fall between kisses, staining reds and olives and warm, warm skin. He no longer feels weightless. The gust of wind tells them that it had been five minutes. His lips feel sore. He feels alive.

“Will,” Nico breathes out, an eternity later. “Will, you’re— “

He feels hands cup at his cheeks, and he cries out. Warmth. Serenity. “I can _feel_ you, Nico.”

**Act VI:** Pacisci  
 _non ho nel sangue nessun desiderio che non sia per te_

Will Solace could not understand the play of fates. There are, more or less, five days at his calling. He receives a vision in his dreams, and he finds the figure there; almost ominous, almost terrifying.

The angel of death peers down as usual, sunken wings breathing in demise, the air around feeling shrill and immovable. Will’s mortal lungs felt constricted, as he swallows the feeling of being so alive. The dream told him that he was, _indeed_ , human now.

Judgment day remained the same. He has to make do with the time he had left.

Nico di Angelo kisses him awake, and he obliges, feeling the canvasses of lips overlapping into one.

“We are going to Texas,” Nico beams at him. The idea was so surreal, Will almost didn’t believe him.

There are two tickets on the bedside porch. Sitting adjacent is the lone newspaper that morning, and today’s headlines read, _‘Texas Launches Medical Charity for Storm Surge Victims.’_ All scrolled underneath in small, printed font, _‘Volunteers needed!’_

And Will kisses him again, the grateful brush of melodies buzzing against his lips. “Thank you,” he whispers.

**———**

“Welcome!” There were two women grinning cheerfully by the doorway, a few steps short of the clinic area. “Age, sir?”

“Um,” Will feels flustered. Nico looks at him in concern. “Thirty-one, miss,” Nico supplied for him.

The lady scribbles down her stash of attendance sheets, all while pausing as if to verify how old he actually was. “Thirty…? That doesn’t sound right,” she smiles up at Will, “You look very youthful. Let me lead you to the line of your fellow age-range patients.”

Will feels Nico tense up beside him. “Actually,” he points out sheepishly, “I’m volunteering.”

The lady’s face morphs into surprise. “Oh! I’m very sorry. Come this way, we will have your license and field checked.”

The space around feels liberating, as he basks in his own element. The swarms of Texan people flowed like grains of salt, washing over bays of hopeful cure, and apparent, wishful thinking. Will Solace sees men, women, and children of all ages. He sees a family of four, two elderly grandparents; he sees a teenager and her little brother in one hand, flying paper bills on the other. He finds peace in the diversity of sights that day, and suddenly the grip on his hand pulses red.

“You were staring.” Nico complains.

“I was not. I was only merely sucking up to get accepted to this bountiful blessing of an event.”

“She was flirting with you,” He mutters, glancing far away.

“Nico,” Will looks at him, “Don’t you think she saw us holding hands?”

There is shuffling from behind them. The lady walks back in, holding a clipboard. “Mr. Solace?” She calls out. “Approved. We need you at station three. I hope you like children?”

Will smiles, then looks at Nico’s still-frowning face. He squeezes his hand one last time as he receives the stack of papers from the lady’s hands, letting her lead him to his stall.

**———**

“Nico!” Will yelps, a toddler climbs up his back as a couple more reach out towards him to clutch at his hair and clothes. “Help!”

Nico was snickering at him, watching from the sidelines. “Hey, I’m not the volunteer here.”

Will rolls his eyes as a boy shoves his lollipop into his mouth, smiling once doing so. Will tries to smile but evidently fails to do so, his eyes looking like he was about to cry. “Nico—!”

He sees a pair of shoes in front of him, then feels the weight lessen as the man scoops out the little girl from his back. He looks up to see his husband carry the child, eyes soft while cooing at her.

Will felt like his cheeks were about to rip apart. He feels his chest constrict at the view unfolding in front of him, remembering a memory from before he had left the earth. He wills himself to be tight-lipped, neutral, until the rabid pulsing in his chest subsides to a mere dance of nerves.

Later at dusk, shortly after the volunteering event had ended, Will finds himself taking Nico to a nearby beach. They left their shoes to stroll barefoot by the shores, the sandy mists of fond nostalgia clouding Will’s thoughts once again, as he reminisces of all the times he had been here strolling in his hometown.

“Thank you, Nico,” he whispers. “I missed home. A lot.”

“I could tell. I missed coming here to visit your mom, too.” Nico laces their fingers together. Depleted waves crash by their feet, the sky above them belches out red-blood orange and drifts apart, dispersing to broken embers of lavender.

Will suddenly stops, letting the wind blow on his face. The sun had already set, and the visitors are starting to clear out from the beach, fading out to harsher, colder rocking of waves filling their senses. Nico stops walking too. “Is there something wrong?”

Will shakes his head, smiling. “You were holding a toddler earlier,” he points out.

“Oh.” Nico smiles back, albeit sadly.

“We were supposed to adopt a daughter. Until I was diagnosed.”

“Look, Will, it wasn’t your fault—“

“I’m sorry, Nico.” He envelopes him into a tight embrace, feeling his warmth bleed into the chilly evening night. “I knew you wanted children. I knew you wanted to raise them together. I _knew_ and I still—I still let my illness get the best of me.”

“No, Will, it’s—“ He hears Nico’s voice crack.

“Shh,” he cradles his head. “I’m sorry for not raising George and Martha with you.”

“We agreed we’re not naming them George and Martha!” Nico exclaimed, laughing, but Will could feel wetness bleed onto his shirt—Nico was crying.

They stayed like that for a couple more moments, and Will only wanted time to freeze. He hated that it was evening, he hated that another one of his days with Nico has been used up. He hated how the stars above seemed to mock him that night, the calm lull of the waves making his heart feel desolate.

He looks at Nico, wiping away his tears, looking at his gaze that had seemed to age faster than he would have thought. He looked like he had seen a lot; _been through_ a lot. But he still looked young; Will thinks he always had been.

Will cups his face into his hands, bringing their lips together for a chaste kiss. He tastes the salt on his lips, and his emotions linger on loneliness.

As he kisses him slow, on that evening painted grey, he pictures Nico, sat in his own house, no children, no laughter, a cold unmade bed, and an anniversary cake waiting for an owner that never came back home.

**Act VII:** Pretiosus **  
** _lo sai, non vedo nella mia vita altro compagno,  
non vedo altra gioia_

“Where are we going today?” Nico asks, tidying up the mess he made in the kitchen. His hair is getting too long, Will notices, because today he has tied it up to a small ponytail, his fringe falling over in shadows.

“I’m going to make a small list, or something,” Will replies, but he was still distracted. “Who cuts your hair for you?” _While I’m gone,_ he was about to say, but decides against it.

“I learned to do it myself. But my skills are rusty, so it tends to look all shaggy and uneven. Most of other times I just let it grow out; I once had butt-length hair, you know,” he laughs, then suddenly it’s fading out. “You always cut my hair nicely. You made me so handsome.”

“You’re still handsome.” Will blurts out.

He’d give anything for Nico’s rosy cheeks that morning—the way sunlight hugs his form, making olive skin glow youthfully; lithe, knowing fingers undoing his ponytail, until his hair falls free. “Then… will you do it? Cut my hair for me?”

Will could never say no.

**———**

The white picket fence surrounding their home reminded Will of his early morning runs, his tired heartbeat that never seemed to slow down after coming back to see Nico di Angelo, laying on their lawn, cloudgazing evident on his bright eyes and rosy cheeks. Sitting on their backyard always seemed to travel them to otherworldly places; where the meadows blossom lilacs during spring, and the lake from across it freezing into glacier hideouts at winter solstice.

They were almost always there, at that lone backyard lawn, the fractal hues of young adult brokenness slowly dying by, and it’s just the both of them surrounded by the very same picket fence. Barricaded. Secure.

And when the stars fill the night sky, the picket fence watches two young men share warmth through a frilly blanket—Will’s small-scale observatory housing the telescope he had purchased—and maybe they would set a tent, opting to snooze in late night haze. The picket fence first sees how the sun rises from the east, and then two young men disrupting the peace of dawn by unceremoniously laughing at the unusual position they wake up to in the morning.

Perhaps Will Solace finds it ironic, very horribly so. He now stands on a lawn too grimy for an empty neighborhood; the picket fence sits idly by as a few of its companions lie down, diminished, maybe afflicted by external force, and he wonders if the affliction is caused by someone he knows.

They got married when he was twenty-two, he died at twenty-four. He thinks Percy Jackson and Annabeth Chase might have been cut off by fate a little later, perhaps when he was supposed to be twenty-seven. Little Jackson, he doesn’t know, probably gone as well, but he’s desolate enough to not mourn, letting the numbness pierce through him.

He was held back by the decades, and his married life was taken away from him, but still he sees this absolute moment magical; in the way Nico’s black cascades fade to a darker hue as it went, his eyes smiling every other time he looks back at him. He’s still so in love as he had been seven years ago, a few more years back, even. He’s beginning to think his love is immortal, as time deems it to be.

“Nico,” he calls out. His husband hums, looking back once again. “The list. I finished it.”

Nico’s eyes glint of hurt, until he breaks eye-contact, finding the dead grass at his feet interesting. His voice comes as a soft crescendo, hushing sentences, “How much more time left?”

“If we count today,” Will swallows. “Four.”

“Four weeks?”

“Four days.”

———

Will lays a paper down between them, the air around them grim, so he claps twice and does his best cheerful voice. “So!” He starts, “I want to do all of these with you.”

Nico receives the paper from him, eyes narrowing at the first entry. “Skydiving?”

“Only if you want to…” Will plays with his hands, suddenly nervous.

“No! I want to,” he insists. “It will be… fun…”

Will frowns. “I’m not forcing you to do everything with me. I just want you to be there.”

Nico shakes his head, finally smiling, “The newlywed couple must do everything together. Rain-shine at its holding, demise at its countenance, I would die for you if you wanted me to.”

Will holds his hand, rubbing his thumb over his knuckles. He grins at the wedding ring sitting at his husband’s finger, kissing his hand once and sighing. “You’ve gone sappy over the years.”

His husband shrugs, finally lacing their fingers together. “I love you, that’s all there is to it.”

———

“Damn, Will! You’re lucky that I love you!” Nico yells, three thousand meters above ground.

“Damn right I am!” Will laughs, screaming and howling out to the outskirts of Buenos Aires down below. “I’m the luckiest man in the world! Nico di Angelo fucking loves me!”

“You’re embarrassing!” Nico screams back, but there are tears in his eyes and he’s laughing so loud.

Will Solace spreads his arms, gliding through his free-fall, letting the rays of sun kiss his face, basking in the afterglow of this happiness he wants to last—as long as forever wanted him to be.

He looks at his husband, but he’s also looking back at him—probably out of fear of watching his feet three thousand meters above ground. “What are you doing?” Will yells, “Don’t look at me, look down below! The view is amazing!”

He sees paradise unfold, and suddenly they’re wrapped around sunlight. The world stops collapsing as the parachute blows up, calming his frayed nerves, fragile senses, steadfast-beating heart. Green spreads out from below, and the azure melts down onto further grassy lands, sunlit fields, and the breeze that called from home.

That night, they ate dinner at a local restaurant, drinking _vino_ until Nico looked tipsy enough to giggle childishly in public, as he tells him, “Angel.”

Will hums, “I know you are, that’s your name.”

“No, you.” He laughs, his face red, and his sentences slurred. “You were spreading your wings, the sun was in your face and you looked so pretty.”

“Pretty.” Will deadpanned.

Nico’s smile then drops; a snide, thin-lipped irony staying on his lips. He looked so defeated, counting on his fingers, the number dying at three. “I thought you were becoming a real angel,” he whispers. “I was terrified you’d fly and leave, like heaven’s calling you. You looked like you belonged in the sky.”

“Nico, I’m here.” Will reassured, though he wasn’t sure how long his assurance would last. He was running out of time, he knew that very well.

And Nico di Angelo believes him, drunk, still counting on his fingers, but it always stops at three.

**Act VIII:** Desolare **  
** _rimani._

“Tell me why this is a good idea,” Nico sneers at the application forms the inking shop had let them fill in. “Tell me why you’re getting a _sleeve_ of all things—!”

“Relax, I can just get piercings if the idea horrifies you too much,” Will suggests, but he’s fidgeting too.

“Yeah? Where?”

Will blushes, “Oh! Um—“

“Will Solace!”

“Fine, I’ll just get the tattoos.”

Nico massages the area between his eyebrows. “Just so you know, I’m not against tattoos. I just don’t think a sleeve would suit you. I don’t want you to regret.”

Will beams. He holds his free hand, rubbing through his knuckles. “Then what do you think I should get?”

Nico seemed to contemplate, looking at the sample sketches the tattoo artist had laid out for them. Details appeared before his eyes, and they’re splashed in black and white, lines neat and abiding. “Well, if we were going to get them together, we need to match.”

“You’re getting one too?” Will asks, surprised.

His husband nods, now taking an interest towards a particular design; Will notices that it was astronomical, somehow. Nico flips through them, humming lowly at designs he finds attractive.

Will seethes in pain later on, eyes focusing on Nico in silent call for help while the other just rolls his eyes in amusement, a corner of his lip upturned. Will had decided to place his tattoo at an area where his neck and shoulder would meet, just enough where it would show through collarless expanses of linen.

Nico gets his own on his inner wrist, that way he sees Will on everything he touches—sees him when necromancy falls from his hands. He watches as the crestfallen ink runs along olive fields of skin, the picture inscribed blotching in reddish glow.

They watch by the meadows again, Nico’s hand in Will’s, as the latter presses his lips on the freshly inked wrist, whispering praises of love as he goes. The design was fairly simple: it was a sketch of a moon revolving around the sun, though not entirely there yet; not enough to make a solar eclipse. Will kisses his wrist once again, moving up to kiss his cheek, and then Nico’s closed eyelids.

He moves once again to claim his lips, his fingers tangling in Nico’s dark locks (now shorter, he smiles into the kiss), mouth coaxing the other open, and they stay like that for a while; dancing above love, painting melancholy red. Nico shifts and he’s kissing down Will’s jaw, down lower until he finds the same sore spot where his tattoo sat. He presses feather-light kisses around the fully-born solar eclipse on his neck, and Will sighs blissfully, playing with his husband’s hair.

Nico breaks apart, cupping Will’s face and bringing their foreheads together, smiling.

“Don’t leave,” he says softly.

Will frowns, breaking away and looking up at the sky. Nico only sighs, resting his head on Will’s shoulder. “Why were you sent back?”

Will doesn’t answer for a while, choosing his words. “I had unresolved business on earth.”

“And that is?”

“You.”

Nico sits up, looking at him. “Will, don’t tell me—“

“I wasn’t allowed to rest in peace. I _can’t_ rest in peace. I was in the _purgatorio_ for seven years walking into voids because the afterlives won’t let me be reborn when I’m still hung up on something. On this _life,_ actually.” He was looking into celestial black, drowns in them, and becomes stuck on its loop for almost an entire decade. “I was thinking about you, even through my death. My love exceeds life itself, Nico di Angelo. I hope you’re okay with that.” When he smiles at him, Nico’s vision is blurry, so he presses his lips and looks away.

“Stay,” Nico whispers, voice unsure.

Will doesn’t say anything back.

**Act IX:** Vuide **  
** _riposati, non temere di nulla_

Blankets pool around them in lithe folds. As Nico squeezes the blindness out of his eyes, adjusting to the sunlight, he sees his husband already sat up on the bed, his back bare, looking out the window. His gaze is far away, Nico notices. The tattoo on his neck had healed slightly now. Nico sits up as well, shifting closer, but Will isn’t noticing his presence. He kisses his tattoo, startling the golden-haired man, so he chuckles lightly and greets him, “Good morning.”

“Good morning,” Will smiles, reaching out an arm to grab him closer, kissing his temple. “Slept well?”

Nico nods, resting his head on his shoulder. He circles his arms around Will’s waist to embrace him. “Where are we going today?”

The hand playing on his hair stops, and Nico can hear his breathing deepen. “Today,” Will starts, voice weak, “I want to visit my grave.”

**———**

The drive was silent. Nico’s free hand was trembling on top of Will’s. The distant scratch of Aerosmith blares ever so slightly, the rain pit-a-pattering upon the windshield of his car. Graveyard blues fill his senses, and suddenly he’s suffocating, grasping for thin air. He fights the warmth ghosting through his eyes, wiping them discreetly on his sleeve.

Will is looking at him from the passenger seat, eyes suddenly aged a couple thousand years. The tears on his cheeks are over a millennia, but he decides to let the past bury him in the decades as the fates deem the hours. He sees a vision of what they might have been—if he had not died—and he paints a picture of the both of them and their two children stargazing by the picket fence: just one, happy family.

They arrive at his gravestone a few more moments later, as he notices Nico’s absent expression. They haven’t talked since the car ride, and Will almost feels like a ghost again.

“After you died, I always returned here. Every day.” Nico finally speaks, but his words sound forced, desperate. “That went on for an entire year, until Percy got sick of me looking like a mess, and told me to go do something with my life.”

Will listens. The umbrella is too small for the both of them, so he makes it that only Nico isn’t being drenched by the storm.

“I _really_ must have been a mess,” he laughs humorlessly. “At one point, some other visitors might have mistaken me for a ghost, or some zombie, because I never did anything to my appearance and let my hair grow wild. My eyes were bloodshot, most probably, but I never looked at the mirror.”

Will grabs his hand, squeezing softly. “I think that’s where the dark magic comes in. When you told me you were diagnosed with grave illness, I just let this darkness… consume me. With all my failed research and my damned naivety, I can’t think of another way to bring you back.” His voice keeps on simmering down to an abrupt stop, until he starts whispering. “Spirits came to me more easily, and I let them follow me to my sleep. They offered me power. Necromancy, they called it. It let me talk to ghosts, so I did that for an entire year, trying to find your soul.”

The rain is already drenching Will wet, but both of them didn’t seem to care. “Nico… I—“ He can’t seem to find his voice. “I was in the _purgatorio,_ those ghosts are probably the unkindly ones who can’t move past the afterlife because they died wanting revenge.”

“So I didn’t see you, after all.” Nico smiles sadly. “Once I accepted more from them, greedily, _desperately,_ I became one entity with all my worst nightmares. I learned how to summon manifestations of you, but sometimes I began to question my own sanity, because what if it wasn’t magic and I was just turning insane?”

The storm beguiles the day, and faint azure drops into monochrome. Wind wraps around them like hurricane, breaths short-lived and heavy. “It was Percy who got you out of that.” Will swallows, finding the name of his late friend bitter on his tongue.

Nico nods, “I never learned how to cope, I got more and more depressed visiting your grave every day. So I stopped. I dedicated all my time to my research, but the sorcery never left me. I still see you everywhere, and sometimes the images were so vivid that I had to rethink my visions of reality. But you never talked. I could see you, but all you do is smile at me sadly, like you pity the man I have become.”

Nico leans forward and embraces him, knocking the umbrella over. “I didn’t like that look on your face. I wanted you to be proud of me. With my abandoned projects and my failures as a husband, I didn’t want that to define me. I wanted to let people know that I was Nico di Angelo, wedded to the late Will Solace; that I’m still strong and I can do the things I do because you’re empowering me to be so.”

The rain is drenching the both of them now, but no one minded. “My visits to your grave became less and less, and it was almost my fourth year of not visiting, until you insisted to come today. This place wrecks me, Will.”

Will hugs him tighter, and he wonders if it’s no longer the rain on his face. As two heartbeats roam the graveyards that day, there is a drizzled applause from the sky and a thunderous freight looming over, and they’re surrounded with the melancholy of abandoned memories. Lightning strikes the nearby tree, but dark is still reigning within the confines of crestfallen tragedy, threatening to fall like shattered glass.

The seconds spill over, and the hourglass turns frail.

  
**Act X:** Hēlios **  
** _dormi stanotte sul mio cuore_  
  


Valhalla told him of paradise, he saw the angel of death and walked his way. On broken whispers of promised delusion and battered down dreams, he stood on the orphaned melody of wolverine lies, knocking down the fortitude that was built over the last thousand years. When he turned, the future held a scepter of choices and a crown that brought thorns, so he wiped his bloody palms on the gashes of his forearms, screaming solitary silence.

The silhouette tells him that remorse had come back to town, painting the roads red and staining the pavements gold. He saw a chamber crumble at the bane of time, curtains revealing a standstill of one more day.

So when the current washes over and crimson paints the bay at his cutthroat, rusty old pair of shoes, he witnesses heaven and an opera-singing of about five thousand miles away. Five hundred million years. History unfolded far better than he would have liked.

The dream keeps him awake all night, so he decides not to sleep at all. His shuffling keeps Nico restless, because now they’re walking down the rocky pavements, climbing up the hill where they got wed, stars littering deviously on the midnight sky.

Nico’s embrace is even tighter tonight, Will notices, because a few moments later he feels cold at the front of his shirt, where tears lay waste. He runs a hand through the dark locks, sliding down to hold his face. He kisses him fiercely, tasting Nico’s tears, tasting his sadness through the tremble of his lips. The west wind blows and Nico topples over him, colliding their lips in broken misery, as if each breath felt like the last.

He falls asleep on the hill. Nico is right beside him, unmoving. He only hopes the angel of death doesn’t find him at that moment, because all he wants is rest. When he wakes, dawn is in his face and melody is in his ears—Nico is humming an Italian song he used to sing to him when he can’t sleep at night.

“Where are we going today?” Nico asks yet once again, but there is no life in his words.

“Just here,” Will moves closer. “Just here with you.”

“What are we going to do?”

“Talk. Whatever you want. Sing to me all day. I won’t go anywhere.”

Nico looks at him, eyes red. “Liar,” he whispers.

Will stays silent, unable to say anything back. Nico sighs, resting his head on Will’s shoulder.

“How did it feel?” Nico starts, hands fidgeting. “The afterlife? What’s in there?”

Will finds his fidgeting hands, clasps them into his, letting warmth bleed into one. “It wasn’t exactly Elysium or any of the sort. In fact, it was empty. I would run around and still find no destination. I could scream and shout and no one would hear me. So I wait,” he pauses. “I wait for the angel of death to show up once again, and it would show me vague recollections of my life as I had lived it. When that ends, and it feels like a brief moment, I would be told that mortal months had passed when all it took was a second.”

Nico listens to the uneasiness in his tone. “Ironic how that goes. I stay insane for a couple of months and you’re out there watching a rerun of your own life.”

“I get shown only the most horrible moments of my life, it wasn’t exactly what I would deem great. The angel comes with the judgment spirits to determine what they would do to me.” He is feeling more weightless by the seconds. “But it was my fault for holding onto something through my death. I still wanted to live, Nico.”

“Then what about now?” He feels the restriction in his throat. His breathing is uneven. “Do you still want to live?”

Will looks at him, unguarded.

“No,” He says, and this time, he is sure. “I want to rest in peace. That’s the only reason I was sent back here. I wanted you to know that I’m sorry, that you married this sickly man who ripped half your heart apart only to leave you alone. I wanted you to know that I still love you, even through my death, even through this translucent life I’m living.”

When he looks at him, there are jewels glimmering in the light of his eyes, and his smile is so, so empty. “I will still love you through a different timeline. I will still love you when I’m reborn in the past or in the future. Maybe in a different universe, we could grow old together.” He kisses his hands. They tremble even more than before. “Maybe in a different universe, people like us live freely.” He kisses the tears that fall. It could fill an ocean. “Maybe in a different universe, we could live through the stars, immortal, forever, _unending_.”

Nico wipes his tears, his hands in Will’s still shaking. Will tells him, _don’t cry, I love you,_ and he obliges, breath stuttering, _I’m okay, I love you too._

“If you get reborn in the past, I could be a prince, you know.”

Will hums, leaning his head on top of Nico’s. “Then I would become a prince from a neighboring country, or be the lucky son of the common-born blacksmith you happen to come across. All I could do is hope you’ll love me back.”

“Then what about the future?”

“Who knows,” Will shrugs, but a tear slips through his eye and his laugh sounds breathless. “I could be a lone rover stuck on your planet. Maybe we would fall in love.”

Nico buries his face in his neck, kissing the solar eclipse. “What do you want to be reborn as?”

“I can be anything, Nico, as long as you love me.”

“What if I don’t?”

“Then I would just live through that entire lifetime and be reborn again. My love exceeds life itself, Nico di Angelo. I hope you’re okay with that.”

“I am.”

They fall into silence, and suddenly it’s dusk; the crescent moon rises up early, scribbling through light years and settles on deep velvet. The world becomes darker again, but light shines through Will’s face— _heavenly,_ Nico thinks.

“Thank you for loving me again, even if it was only for six days.” Nico tells him, and he smiles genuinely, like a burden had been lifted off his shoulders. He tells him as the sun drowns into red, indigo, black. He holds Will’s hand, but it’s not there anymore, yet his face gleams through the moonlight.

“Nico,” He hears Will’s voice through his drowsiness. Nico sees him, but at the same time he doesn’t. His voice rings through the empty night, and it’s all that surrounds him. “Love me in my next life.”

Nico smiles, but his eyes are closing, and the light in front of him is blinding.

When he wakes up, the hill is empty.

**Epilogue** — Amongst Cosmos

Valhalla told him of paradise, so he waits.

He sits by the park, elderly grime too desolate for eighty years old. He watches as grey cars and worn-down minivans litter the townie road ahead, gaze emanating the same old fondness it had back then. The papers being held by the journalist read that the 2020 Nobel Prize for Medicine had indeed been awarded to Nico di Angelo, and his news articles indicated that he had a husband who died long ago.

What countryside Arizona didn't know was that Nico di Angelo was a wielder of supernatural sorcery, although he had vowed to never come across it again.

The golden-haired man smiles, electrifying blue eyes match what seemed was the start of summer solstice, the recorder bouncing happily in his hand. Nico di Angelo thinks his fame should have ended thirteen years ago, when the plaque arrives at his doorstep, and he almost dies earlier than expected. But he’s old and his knees creak by the slightest movement he creates, yet journalists still swarm at his caller I.D., driving his secretary absolutely livid.

“On an interview you did two years ago, you had stated that your primary inspiration for completing this research was your late husband. Can you describe him?”

Nico thinks the man is testing private, unadulterated waters, and he believes he’s bordering unprofessional territories, but he sighs, tired.

“Soulmate.” He says, but his wrinkled smile appears, genuine. “He was my soulmate, that man. Wherever he may be now, I hope my love reaches him from the papers that I write, even though I don’t write romantic novels.”

The guy scribbles on his notes, still shoving the recorder uncomfortably close, but the old man doesn’t mind. “He’s among the cosmos now, and when you look up to the sky you’ll probably see a single bright star. I believe he had made Polaris even brighter.” He coughs, the decades catching up to him, and suddenly the millennia sets him free. “So I don’t write romantic novels, yes, but I hope Dr. Solace is touched that I’m still rescuing people through my research, even after his time.”

Later on he finds out that the news is published on this popular weekly magazine, and his name skyrockets on television portals once again. He receives more calls from unknown gossip sites, and journalists seemed to grow on his backyard tree, but he utters more apologetic smiles to his secretary as he sits down on his lawn. He laughs at the run-down house that had never changed since the day Will had died. The white picket fence he did fix, they look ghostly white for his own liking, but he occasionally uses the broken telescope from Will’s small-scale observatory, trying to see if he finds Will sitting somewhere on the Polaris.

It seemed silly almost, but he’s lying if he says he doesn’t miss him the slightest bit.

Suddenly he’s twenty and in love once again, and the broken telescope only shows him a blurry caricature of the moon, but Nico pretends he sees Will, in all his glowering radiance, smiling at him from the skies. And he feels him, several light years away, waiting for him to be reborn in a timeline where they fall in love all over again.

So he sleeps, only good memories in his dreams.

The television portals blare of yet another different kind of news the next day, but it also involved the man from the Nobel Prize. He was said to be found dead in his own home, and the discussion sites are still fighting over what seemed to be the cause of his death. The weekly magazine on his bedside table had been found by the investigators, a folded page revealing a certain article. They skim through the last lines, where it read, _“I’m coming soon. See you in the next life, Will Solace.”_

**Author's Note:**

> this is the longest work i have written so far. this story was initially an idea i had for a different fandom. the earliest form of it was the plot centering around a criminal organization, in which the main pairing is a bonnie-and-clyde kind of relationship almost. but coming back to the pjo fandom 5 months ago, i came to love solangelo again and thought about writing for them.
> 
> i started this in january, but i never really had the motivation to finish it. so when i abandoned it, it only went until act iv. reading your comments from my previous work (night strangers) really got me back into writing, i owe you guys. i'm glad i continued writing this, because i'm really happy with this work.
> 
> the 'act' titles with the italian phrases are from an actual poem :) 
> 
> Rimani (Stay) by Gabriele D’Annunzio  
> Stay! Rest beside me.  
> Do not go.  
> I will watch you. I will protect you.  
> You'll regret anything but coming to me, freely, proudly.  
> I love you. I do not have any thought that is not yours;  
> I have no desire in the blood that is not for you.  
> You know. I do not see in my life another companion, I see no other joy  
> Stay.  
> Rest. Do not be afraid of anything.  
> Sleep tonight on my heart.
> 
> i hope you guys liked reading this as much as i have loved writing it. feedback would mean the world to me, and i would love some constructive criticism on my writing too! stay safe in these trying times, in demigoddishness, and all that.


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